CPM general secretary Prakash Karat at a news conference in New Delhi on Sunday. Picture by Prem Singh

New Delhi, Sept. 7: The CPM today said scrapping the nuclear deal would be a condition for supporting a government in the future, taking the battle beyond the Manmohan Singh regime.

“The struggle to rescind the agreement is not over. The party will continue to see there is no agreement and the steps for the termination of the deal are taken after a new Parliament and government are in place,” CPM general secretary Prakash Karat said at the end of a two-day politburo meeting.

The 123 Agreement, which lays down the nuts and bolts of civil nuclear co-operation between the US and India, has a provision that says: “Either party (country) shall have the right to terminate this agreement prior to its expiration on one year’s written notice to the other party.”

Karat lashed out at the “orchestrated” government propaganda and “corporate media” for terming the NSG waiver “historic”. He said it was “another surrender” in the journey to “total surrender”, which he seemed to suggest would occur when the deal came into force.

“Our political battle is here and not in Vienna or Washington. Earlier, we withdrew support on this issue and we are now fighting the ruling coalition. The struggle to rescind or reverse this deal is not over.”

Karat said “any new government that comes to power after the next elections other than the Congress should get the Indo-US nuclear deal terminated” to secure the CPM’s support.

Asked if his party would work with the BJP, which too has opposed the waiver, Karat said the BJP was in favour of re-negotiating, as opposed to scrapping, the deal.

The politburo statement echoed Karat: “The NSG waiver opening the door to nuclear trade for India after a three-day meeting is neither clean nor unconditional and reflects the continuous concessions India has made on the issue.”

According to the statement, the “text of the waiver has converted the voluntary moratorium on testing into a multilateral commitment”.

It also accused the Centre of having agreed to a condition under which any fuel supply agreement would be subject to periodic NSG reviews and to India’s moratorium on testing.

The CPI attacked the Prime Minister for dubbing the waiver “historic”, saying there was “a deliberate attempt to hide the adverse amendments in the final draft”.

RSP general secretary T.J. Chandrachoodan said: “Our objection is to the (US domestic) Hyde Act and we will continue to fight the deal.”

The Forward Bloc’s G. Devarajan said he still didn’t know what the NSG conditions were but criticised the “abject surrender of our sovereignty”.

The CPM statement also touched on trade talks and demanded a white paper on the last World Trade Organisation mini-ministerial conference in July, which is said to have resolved 17 of the 20 contentious issues.